crazy society

[jac]

I was thinking about the raw milk issue and searched the web and found that according to the FDA… 300 folks got ill in 2002 from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made with the same raw ingredients !! bad enough and I feel sorry for them but a lot of the sickness was probly caused by dirty utensils …. on the other hand 440,000 folks DIED from cigaretts !!!!. I still cant get my head round how the illegal substance is milk !!! and its just as stupid over here in the UK ….
John

[dlskidmore]

I have no desire to drink my milk raw, but I support your right to do so. As long as everything is honestly labeled, I think you should be allowed to buy whatever your neighbor is producing. I do support programs like organic certification where the government licences certification organizations, so we all have a standard of what product labels mean. There are also good privately run programs like the National Yogurt Association’s Live and Active Cultures seal and the various Kosher seals. I think supporting these types of certifications promotes the public perception that the food chain can be safeguarded without government interference.

[Phil]

I’m betting that the majority of the reported raw milk illnesses weren’t caused by raw milk at all. There’s a tendency to point the finger at raw milk as the culprit just because there’s a bottle of it in the refrigerator.

[lancek]

not only the pointing of the finger but they point it at the indaveduals that cant defend themselfs! Look at the giant egg and produce recall that we just had more people got sick over this than they did from raw milk and I dont even like raw milk!

[jac]

Seems to be a case of the big guys winning again. I certainly like fresh cooled milk straight from the tank..
John

[dlskidmore]

Thing is, it’s impossible to do a double-blind study, from what I hear raw milk tastes different enough, and any study that obviously is asking what kind of milk do you drink and how often are you ill will have reporter bias, so there’s no good way to prove the safety of the milk. A study of raw milk drinkers vs non-raw milk drinkers would indicate the safety to some degree though. Are there any raw milk companies/co-ops/associations that are big enough to fund such a study?

[jac]

I see where your at but it does seem odd that a product that is a known killer is legal but the governments on both sides of the puddle oulaw raw milk ??? you should really give the raw milk a try btw, the flavour is totally better . providing the herd is tb and bruselocis tested there is no health risk. Spotless containers is the secret with milk..I fear that a survey might come down on the wrong side for raw milk because of the alienation towards unproccessed food created by the advertisings of the big food companies…
John

[dlskidmore]

@jac 20919 wrote:

I see where your at but it does seem odd that a product that is a known killer is legal but the governments on both sides of the puddle oulaw raw milk ??? you should really give the raw milk a try btw, the flavour is totally better . providing the herd is tb and bruselocis tested there is no health risk.

$$$$$ That’s why. There is no Big Raw Milk lobby. That and at the time that pasteurization was mandated we didn’t have general good sanitation or refrigeration, so the science at the time was able to make a very strong case.

And we do prohibit tobacco use among those of the age group that are the biggest milk drinkers (babies and young children.) Maybe it would be a step in the right direction to have to be 18 to buy raw milk? 🙂

[Joshua Kingsley]

When my grandfather was fighting cancer and on chemo he was told that raw milk was one of the best things he could drink. I have drank raw milk since I was a kid, either from our goats or cows depending on the time in my life.

[dlskidmore]

They told my mother the opposite, to stay away from any sort of raw food, or even processed foods that tend to sit around before consumption such as lunch meats.

The milk though I assume would be easy on the stomach and simple to digest as long as you are not lactose intolerant.

[jac]

I cant help wondering if the food addatives that have been added to food for the last 100 years isnt partly to blame for the rise in cancers ?? The microwave is another bit of modern technology that i cant bring myself to trust. The big supermarkets couldnt operate without food addatives and preservatives either but I read somewhere that a human body takes longer to decompose now than it did 100 years ago and thats been put down to a lifetime residual build up of preservatives !!!… I find it hard to think that nature can create a condition that makes raw milk or other unproccessed foods disagree with the body…
John

[dlskidmore]

No doubt the additive have something to do with it. My father was a food engineer for many years, and he had many concerns. Each of the food additives is tested individually safe, but not in combinations. They once had some returned product when the vitamin additive reacted to the acid in the food and caused crystals to form. The customer thought there was broken glass in the food. And that’s just one additive in one natural food, nevermind all the different things they add.

I feel the same about many of our medicines. I try to be on as few as possible, despite my doctor’s recommendations for my chronic issues. There’s nothing wrong with fighting through it sometimes.

Oh, and it wasn’t the cancer that made Mom germophobic, it was the chemo.

[Phil]

Just my 2 cents on raw milk and lactose intolerance, I thought for most of my life that I was lactose intolerant, but now that I drink only raw milk I have no milk issues whatsoever.

[Marshall]

I always wondered why it is neccessary to take stuff out of milk (fat and cream) and add other stuff (vitamins and who knows what else) to make it “better” for us.

[Carl Russell]

Milk is directly produced from the blood of the cow, and as such it is enriched by the immune system of the animal. If the cow is out in fresh air, drinking clean water, and grazing good grass there are very few foods that are as good for you. Raw milk actually has active microbes in it, that act to prevent Lactose intolerance. Raw milk being a product of the immune system is excellent food for people with compromised immune systems.

There is no logic that can convince me that as an organism of the earth I should have to “treat” my food before I consume it. If you pick an apple up from under a tree, it’s pretty likely it landed where a deer shit. Not that we want to be eating filthy food, but just because something is Raw, or even exposed to bodily fluids, doesn’t mean that it is un-healthy.

The reason we started pasteurizing milk was because farms began to grow in urban areas where there was a good milk market, but little open land. Confined and fed food stuffs other than grass these animals got ill and the milk became contaminated. Rather than changing the farming model back to small herds on grass, we found pharmaceutical and technological solutions. Vaccinate the cows and cook the milk.

It is a cultural habit to drink pasteurized milk, but the stuff we sell and drink these days is just a calcium rich vitamin fortified liquid. There are actually many more people documented to have been made ill from pasteurized milk than from raw.

Below are some data presented by a friend of mine in a presentation she made this spring in VT.
CDC data show that 27,645 food bourne illnesses were reported in 2006. According to CDC Statistics, 48 out of 27,645 are attributed to raw milk.

From 1973-2005 1,585 total illnesses attributed to Raw milk, while 19,835 total illnesses were attributed to Pasteurized milk.

I see nothing healthful about milk that is produced from animals raised in confinement, pumped full of antibiotics, vaccines, growth hormones, and fed high energy feed, then broken down into components, cooked to kill all the active organisms, recombined in artificial proportions, and fortified with vitamins and minerals. Why would people feed this to their kids????

Carl

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